


You Kept Singing To Me

by onlytheshortones



Series: Give It Up [2]
Category: Veep
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M, fuckboys in love, home from college
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-22
Updated: 2015-07-22
Packaged: 2018-04-10 15:32:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4397327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onlytheshortones/pseuds/onlytheshortones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Well me, I got out, and you kept singing to me</i>
  <br/>
  <i>Like it's really gonna set this free</i>
</p><p>Dan is home from his first semester at college, and he's not doing well with it. Jonah is home as well. Sequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/4054441/chapters/9122971">Change Just As They Land</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Kept Singing To Me

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to [Change Just As They Land](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4054441/chapters/9122971), and if you haven't read the former, then this is probably very OOC because that was a long-ass fic that took the characters in some directions that they might not have gone in within actual canon. I'm not even sure if this qualifies as Veep fic anymore, but I had people requesting a sequel so I'm posting it anyway.
> 
> Anyway, here it is. Title is pretty much the only lyric from Give It Up that I didn't use in the original fic, because I knew I was gonna write this sequel from the beginning.

By the time Dan pulls into the driveway of his parents’ house, it’s almost three in the morning. He puts the car in park and rests his head on the steering wheel. Jesus fucking Christ has it been a long semester.

His car is full of bags, but he doesn’t have it in him to carry them inside right now, so he grabs his backpack from the passenger’s seat and his keys from the ignition, and gets out of his Jeep. He walks quietly to the front door and turns the key in the lock. In the house, shoes off, up the stairs, to his room, in his bed. Quickly, but quietly. He’s gonna be out as soon as his head hits the pillow, he’s sure of it.

But…he’s not. He’s pulled off his jeans and his sweater and he’s in bed under the covers, and his eyes…won’t stay closed. He’s sure he fucked up something about Jim Crow on the final, but now he can’t remember what. And Jessica’s probably going to be pissed that he took off without saying goodbye, but he doesn’t owe her shit yet anyway, right? And he’s still worried what another semester living outside the Pike house might do to his social standing, and his roommate Matthew has been getting on his nerves anyway and he didn’t get into the Econ class he wants to take next semester and that means he’s not going to be up to the proper credit number, unless he throws in some gen ed, but that doesn’t seem like the right move, and logically he knows he can’t deal with it until add/drop but still he needs to know what he’s going to do if he wants to make sure he qualifies for his major and he has to qualify for his major because if he doesn’t then what is he even doing…his heart rate is increasing and he is not in the mood to deal with this now, he just needs to get some fucking sleep, he’s been running on Red Bull and pancakes from the dining hall for the last week and a half.

He sits up in bed and grabs for his backpack. Luckily, his Xanax is in there. Apparently Dan from eight hours ago thought ahead. He pops one of those, and then an Ambien, then lies back down and tries to breathe. In, hold, out. In, hold, out. He’ll probably never sleep at this rate.

But it’s surprisingly comfortable in this room, in this bed. Dan smirked his way through finals with all his friends talking about how they couldn’t wait to get back to their real homes, that college was fun and all, but it wasn’t _home_. Dan doesn’t disagree with that, really. It’s hard to call a cramped room he shares with another guy and a communal bathroom “home.” But he left “home” behind when he went to college—he’s not the kid who cries at night because he misses his parents or his dog or his room.

Except sometimes when he’s on his way home from the library at 3 AM and he hasn’t eaten and he feels dizzy and tired and doesn’t want to go back to his tiny fucking dorm room, he finds himself missing the feeling of getting home after a long day. And sometimes when he’s talking to a girl at a party and she does that fake fucking laugh at one of his jokes, he finds himself imagining Amy rolling her eyes. And sometimes when someone hands him a flaming joint and he burns his fingers in the transfer he finds himself wishing he had Jonah’s pipe, and Jonah lighting it for him.

And right now he’s fucking grateful to be in his childhood bedroom, and to have nothing ahead of him except empty space and time. No frat guys to impress, girls to woo, work to get done, just time to fucking breathe.

He takes a deep breath in, lets it out, and feels sleep coming, finally.

 

* * *

 

It’s Sunday morning, and he slept all through Saturday. He’s awake now, and has declined, as usual, his parents’ invitation to go to church with them. Dave is downstairs watching TV, and he should probably go watch with him, in the interest of being a good brother. But the whole happy-to-be-home vibe disappeared as soon as he fully woke up. Not that he wants to be back at school (he’s sure his shoulders have dropped at least an inch since he drove the fuck away from campus), but he absolutely does not want to be holed up in this damn house, this damn town that he escaped four months ago.

He grabs his keys and heads downstairs instinctively. Forget that he doesn’t really have anywhere to go, he just needs to be in his damn car. So he drives. He drives the highway, stops at Starbucks, drives the back roads, drives until his gas needle is pointing below empty, then reluctantly stops to fill the tank before heading home.

It’s midafternoon when he pulls back into his driveway, just as he sees Jonah walk out his front door towards his own car. He gets out of the car, slamming the door, and Jonah turns toward the noise. Dan cracks a half a smile, not sure if he should go say hi or if Jonah’s on his way out or if they’re really friends anymore or what this break is going to be.

But then Jonah raises his hand in half an awkward wave and he’s got this dopey look on his face and he’s just so damn _Jonah_ that Dan has to bite his lip to keep from grinning, and without even thinking about it, he’s crossing his yard. He meets Jonah in the middle, and for a second they just look at each other, smiling little half-grins. Dan finally clears his throat, and they hug, a quick clap on the back, drawing back immediately.

“What’s up, man?” Dan asks, not sure how else to begin. “How are you?”

“You know,” Jonah says, a bit off-kilter. “The usual. Crushin’ it.”

Dan snorts. “Yeah, right. The usual.”

Jonah mimes checking a watch on his empty wrist. “Twelve seconds to the first asshole comment.” But his grin hardly fades.

“Fuck, I’m losing my edge,” Dan shoots back, but he can’t keep from smiling either.

“I was just headed out for some coffee, want to join?” Jonah asks, and the hopeful edge in his voice doesn’t even make Dan anxious.

“Yeah, sure,” he says. Fuck the venti Americano he finished twenty minutes ago. More caffeine never hurt anyone.

 

Jonah’s doing _great_. It’s not like it’s unexpected—they haven’t been totally incommunicado this semester. They traded a few Snapchats, they liked each other's tweets. They commented back and forth on a Buzzfeed article some asshole posted on Amy's timeline. And Jonah’s pretty fucking active on social media, and all his pictures are haphazard selfies and group shots where he’s grinning like an asshole, like Dan didn’t see him grin their entire time at high school. It’s obvious he has plenty of friends and knowing Jonah, Dan could guess that means he’s doing well. 

But it’s making his stomach hurt a little to hear (although that might just be the second large coffee he’s had within the hour). Jonah barely stops talking, filling the car with amiable chatter about friends and classes and how maybe he has an affinity for psychology but that’s such a “basic” major. He goes on about how he’s loving the chance to just explore his interests and for once he feels like school is interesting and easy and he loves his friends and…Dan can barely keep up. And it’s not that Jonah’s monopolizing conversation, there are plenty of well-placed pauses and gentle prompts where Dan could pick up the slack, but he doesn’t quite have it in him. So he listens. He listens and he tries not to think about where the fuck he went wrong that Jonah’s having a better time than he is, because that’s an asshole thing to think, and he knows he’s an asshole but he also knows that Jonah deserves some happiness after his high school experience. Dan just doesn’t see why he can’t have an okay time too.

And it’s not that he’s miserable or anything. It’s just that he’s just pledged Pike and that’s a lot of guys who always want to get really drunk, and he’s trying to nail down his poly-sci major and maintain a 4.0 and it’s a lot of pressure and a lot of work. And yeah he's had to refill his Xanax prescription once or twice but still, his transcript is going to look good. And if Amy was here, that would be enough of an answer to the "how's college?" question. But she’s not, she’s doing Christmas in fucking Bermuda with her family, and Jonah’s gonna want more than "my grades are good" and he’s tired of pretending shit is better than it is. The semester has been hell, and Dan’s only up to a certain level of performance, and Jonah’s too perceptive for that level. So Dan just listens, and smiles at the right places, and does his best to be happy for his friend.

 

* * *

 

It’s Monday evening, and they’re in Dan’s car on the way to the lake to smoke a bowl (because being home means being doted on and watched like a hawk), and Jonah stops in the middle of a sentence and says “hey, I’m talking a lot, aren’t I?” and Dan lets himself half-smile when he nods.

They lapse into a bit of a silence, Jonah watching Dan expectantly. Dan feels his gaze and takes long, deep breaths, hoping to make it clear he’s not actually going to broach the topic of his own semester.

“So, have you talked to Amy?” Jonah asks, throwing him a rope, pulling them into clear territory. Dan exhales carefully before answering. Sometimes Jonah really has his shit together.

 

He’s lying on his stomach on Jonah’s bed, picking absentmindedly at pills on the comforter, slowly coming down from a nice even high. Jonah’s on his back next to him, quiet, and suddenly Dan is hit with a wave of feeling. It’s just. It’s so _comfortable_ here, a comfort he absolutely has not experienced in months. A comfort he’s all but forgotten he could feel. It almost unsettles him, makes him want to crawl right out of his own body, but not quite. Instead, it just sort of sets his skin on edge, like he’s on pins and needles waiting for something, but he doesn’t know what.

“So how’re things down south?” Jonah out and out asks for the first time all night, and Dan instinctively tenses for a fight. He breathes in and then out, counting slowly in his head, hoping to clear the tension from his body. He hears Jonah exhale next to him, and feels the bed move, then an arm pressing against his.

“It’s fine,” he says finally. “It’s a lot of work and…it’s fine.”

“You pledged Pike this semester, right?” Jonah asks, skirting past the moment.

Dan nods.

“Was that good?” Jonah presses.

Dan takes a few more even breaths. “It’s gonna provide some great networking opportunities.”

There’s a beat. Dan can almost hear the snow falling outside.

“That’s not what I asked,” Jonah says quietly.

Dan buries his head in Jonah’s pillow. It smells like Jonah, and he takes a deep breath in without entirely thinking about it.

“Dan?” Jonah says, and Dan picks his head back up and rolls onto his side to face Jonah.

“What do you want me to say, Jonah?” he asks, his voice embarrassingly rough, close to breaking.

“I don’t know,” Jonah says, suddenly on the defensive. “I’ve just never fucking seen you like this. You usually at least try to pretend you’re doing good. Brag about some chick you’re banging or something, I don’t know.”

Dan sighs. The thing is, it would be easy. It would be easy to talk about Jessica, who’s a Kappa Delta and texts him maybe a little too much but is hot by anyone’s standards. It would be easy to talk about how trashed he gets every weekend and not mention that it’s the only time he feels at all comfortable in his own skin when he’s there. It would be easy to pretend. But…

“I’m just so tired, Jonah,” he says, pressing his ear to the pillow. It might be the most honest he’s ever been with someone else.

Jonah turned onto his side too, adjusting his body to face Dan’s more clearly, and Dan is suddenly very aware of him, physically. He doesn’t know what to do with that, remembers the last time they were this close to each other on this bed, and how it ended with his fingers sticky with ice cream and an unspoken question that, now he thinks about it, was never answered. Instinctively, he looks up at the stars on Jonah’s bedroom ceiling. The bedside lamp is on, and they’re not glowing.

Jonah follows his eyes up to the ceiling, and then they’re looking at each other and Jonah’s gaze is probing in a way Dan isn’t entirely okay with, his skin alight with some sensation he doesn’t altogether recognize. It’s suddenly too much, and he looks down and starts to move backwards, but Jonah puts a hand on his arm.

“Dan,” he says softly, and his hand is so hot on Dan’s arm that Dan freezes where he is, the sensation spreading outward.

“Jonah, I don’t—” he starts to say. He doesn’t even know where the sentence was going to end, and he doesn’t have to, because suddenly Jonah is kissing him, breathless and fast and nothing like the last time. That was slow and soft and sweet and this is raw and messy and there’s something desperate around the edges, but he’s pretty sure that’s coming entirely from him. 

But it’s fast and hot and it’s so exactly what Dan needed, he just never knew. He pushes against Jonah’s chest and climbs on top of him, kissing him harder and more and Jonah pushes back in just the right way, rocking up against him and Dan can’t think straight, can’t see anything behind his eyelids but red and heat and desperation.

He’s sure that any second, Jonah’s going to pull back, call this off, but he hasn’t yet, and still doesn’t when Dan grapples with the buttons of his flannel and then Jonah’s hands have snaked their way up under his t-shirt, still spreading heat everywhere they touch, and it’s all he can do to keep from groaning, it’s all he can do to keep himself present in this moment, because fuck if this isn’t one of the strangest things that’s happened to him. But he’s gotten Jonah’s shirt off and Jonah’s pulling at his, and god, he’s going to have to stop kissing him if it’s going to come off, but he’s afraid that if he breaks from him, the moment will end, Jonah will come to his senses, and Dan needs this maybe like he’s never needed anything else.

Jonah sits up without breaking the kiss though, pulls Dan to straddle him, and keeps his hands firmly on Dan’s hips.

“Dan,” he says, muffled into Dan’s mouth.

Dan keeps kissing him anyway, all _God don’t let this end_ , all rough and scrambling tongue. Jonah pulls back and Dan follows for as long as he can, but fuck, Jonah is just too tall, and he breaks the kiss. Dan pulls a ragged breath and looks down, ready to apologize, ready to force a smile and climb down and pretend this never happened.

“Dan,” Jonah says, soft, his hands moving to Dan’s chin, framing his jaw and silently asking him to look up. Dan reluctantly meets his eyes. They stay there for a moment, frozen eye contact, and Dan closes his mouth. There’s something there in Jonah’s eyes that he can’t describe, that he couldn’t describe, that he’s sure no fucking poetry class could ever teach him to describe, something to do with want and something to do with fire and something to do with knowledge and it makes him want to run and it makes him want to stay and it makes want Jonah’s hands on him. He raises his arms without thinking twice about it, and Jonah pulls off his shirt, and then they’re kissing again, hotter than before, faster, more breathless, just _more_. And Jonah’s hand flips the switch on the bedside lamp, and they collapse back down onto the bed and it’s all just _more_.

 

The stars above them are glowing green, and Dan is lying in the crook of Jonah’s arm, cuddling in that sickening way he always hates with girls. He’s only just catching his breath and he’s beat, bone-deep physically tired but also mentally exhausted in a way he hasn’t been in months, like he actually thinks he could just fall asleep if he tried, without having to take an Ambien or do some sort of guided meditation or whatever the fuck other solutions he’s had handed to him over the last few years. Jonah makes a low sort of humming sound in his throat, and Dan cranes his neck to look at him, suddenly struck anew with panic that this was alla mistake, an elaborate joke or Jonah doing him some twisted favor.

“I can go home,” he says quickly, words tripping over each other.

Jonah doesn’t say anything.

Dan starts to sit up. “I don’t have to—”

Jonah’s arm around his shoulder pushes him back down. “Shh.”

“No, it’s fine,” he says. “I can go, I—”

“Don’t,” Jonah says simply, and Dan stops struggling and looks up at him again.

Jonah looks calm, eyes half-closed, sprawled out under the sheet, smiling softly. And honestly, fuck him for being so calm, it’s just like last summer when they kissed, when Jonah acted like it was nothing and Dan’s head had spun for days. If this is going to be something else they pretend never happened, then Dan needs to go home now before it gets too confusing for him.

“Jonah—” he starts.

“I don’t want you to go,” Jonah says, quietly, almost a question. “Stay.”

Dan stays where he is for a second, half sitting, half lying down. It’s stupid to stay here, in Jonah’s bed in his fucking parents house, when he could easily walk the fifty-eight paces back to his own house and his own bed where everything is far less muddled. But he’s so exhausted, and fuck if it’s not _comfortable_ leaning against Jonah like this, and maybe muddled isn’t the worst thing that can possibly happen to him. He hesitates just a second longer, then settles back against Jonah.

In a few weeks he’ll head back to school, back to his real life and the real career that faces him, back to frat guys and his unresolved Economics class and Jessica, and to his fucking roommate and the long walk from his dorm to the library. But for now, there’s no reason to think about that. For now he can stay right here, with Jonah, under a ceiling of glow-in-the-dark stars, and actually relax, and fall asleep and save his real life for later.


End file.
